Dating Facts vs. Fiction: Great Male Survey Results

Earlier this summer, we at AM embarked on one of our bigger editorial ventures: the 2008 Great Male Survey. Over the course of six weeks, we presented our readers with more than 150 multiple-choice questions covering a range of topic areas — lifestyle, dating, sexuality, power and money, and men in 2008.

Our goal was to use the Great Male Survey to paint an accurate and thorough picture of the modern man, and an early step in the process was establishing what the popular perceptions of men are. It seems that a lot of the old stereotypes regarding guys hold true, and this is especially the case when it comes to relationships. Whether it’s because women spend so much time slagging us in public forums or because we’re too easy about letting it slide, the collective picture of the husband/boyfriend isn’t the prettiest one. In the eyes of many, men are organ-obsessed, disloyal, crass commitment-phobes.

Is this portrait as nonsensical as our guts tell us it is? Or is it depressingly spot-on? Let’s look to some of the results for our answers, using the popular myths as our starting points.

We’ve also incorporated some of the results from Yahoo! Shine’s Great Female Survey to give you a sense of what’s happening in her brain.

Men like bimbos

Women love to moan about how superficial we guys are when it comes to matters of the heart. It’s unfortunate that we’ve given them so much evidence to support this claim. From Marilyn Monroe to Pam Anderson to Jessica Simpson, a steady stream of vacuous pop-culture bimbos has received the adulation of our gender, persuading the opposite sex that, to us men, vacuousness is an attractive quality. So, has the Great Male Survey cleared our names? Yes! 91% of the respondents were down with dating a lady with a bigger brain, and 21% ranked intelligence as the trait that makes a woman “relationship material.”

What women want: What they don’t want is a dim-witted partner. Among the participants in the Shine survey, 49% said they would not date a guy who was lower on the IQ scale.

Men are eager to cheat

Well, it’s tough to blame those who buy into this myth. Male fantasy shows like Entourage and Mad Men certainly perpetuate it in the man-slut lifestyles they depict, and any guy who tells you that he hasn’t daydreamed about an off-limits female is having you on. Of course, the important question is whether or not the average man would act on such a fantasy, and the resounding survey response was “no!” 69% of Great Male Survey participants vowed that they would never cheat on their partners, either because they loved them too much or because cheating was a moral violation.

What women want: They ladies were even more indignant in their responses to this question, with 86% dismissing the possibility. Take that with a grain of salt, though: Whatever they may say, a NOPR study concluded that one in five married women stray.

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